WV Wesleyan MFA Podcast

WV Wesleyan MFA Winter 2019 Residency "Nonsense is the gateway back to pleasure." --SS Guest poet Steve Scafidi discusses "how to survive, how to persist" as a writer. Scafidi joined us as part of the Visiting Writers Series supported with funding from the WV Humanities Council.

WV Wesleyan MFA Summer 2018 Residency "The thing that I love about metaphor is that's when you know you're with another person...when you're reading something and you encounter a metaphor that you're grateful to receive, that's when you feel less alone." -- NP Guest fiction writer Nathan Poole reads his story "Open Season" for the Visiting Writers Series supported with funding from the WV Humanities Council. Read Nathan's story by subscribing to Ecotone: https://ecotonemagazine.org/fiction/open-season/

WV Wesleyan MFA Summer 2018 Residency Endings don't stand alone; we must lay groundwork for them throughout our stories. Corcoran discusses how to achieve an ending that is "inevitable but surprising": "If your story evolves, remember to let the ending evolve too." --J.C. This lecture discusses the stories: “In the Gloaming,” Alice Elliott Dark; “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” Ursula K. Le Guin; and “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor.

WV Wesleyan MFA Summer 2018 Residency “When do you let the characters speak? When you can't stop them." -- Prose writer Richard Schmitt This lecture discusses “Bliss” by Katherine Mansfield (originally published in Bliss and Other Stories, 1918) and “Land of the Living” by Sam Shepard (from his 2009 collection, Day out of Days).

WV Wesleyan MFA Summer 2018 Residency “Research helps us avoid historical erasure." -- Poet Remica Bingham-Risher This lecture discusses work by Ocean Vuong, Natasha Trethewey, Patricia Smith, and others. You'll find the readings here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FbN0x0pLYCMrM6jywB0OPYgZEfQzwHZ90C1V4yOx3QM/edit#gid=0 Remica's work at residency was supported with funding from the WV Humanities Council. You can discover more about her work here: https://www.remicabinghamrisher.com/

WV Wesleyan MFA Summer 2017 Residency Guest faculty Mesha Maren reads from her debut novel forthcoming from Algonquin Books in January 2019. The novel follows the story of Jody after her release from prison, alternating with chapters unfolding the months leading up to her incarceration.

WV Wesleyan MFA Summer 2017 Residency "Sometimes the things that we are most familiar with...are the things that we've lost the ability to elucidate." --JC, guest prose faculty Learn more about Corcoran's debut story collection THE ROPE SWING here: http://jonathancorcoranwrites.com/

WV Wesleyan MFA Winter 2018 Residency "So I started this novel that's asking the question, 'How do we deal with grief?'" --JT Guest faculty Jacinda Townsend, author of "Saint Monkey" (winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for best fiction written by a woman in 2014 and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for best historical fiction), reads from her newly-completed novel.

WV Wesleyan MFA Winter 2018 Residency "I wrote about these traumas because I didn't want anyone else who might go through them to feel like they were alone." -- LJC Guest memoirist Laurie Jean Cannady reads from "Crave: Sojourn of a Hungry Soul" for the Visiting Writers Series supported with funding from the WV Humanities Council. Find out more about Cannady's work here: https://www.lauriejeancannady.net/

WV Wesleyan MFA Winter 2018 Residency "We write the same story over and over again...until we write our way out of the story." -- RGH Guest poet Rebecca Gayle Howell reads a selection of poems for the Visiting Writers Series supported with funding from the WV Humanities Council. Rebecca's AMERICAN PURGATORY won the 2016 Sexton Prize: http://www.rebeccagaylehowell.com

WV Wesleyan MFA Summer 2017 Residency "They say Make a bowl of your heart." -- MCH Guest faculty member Mary Carroll-Hackett reads a selection of poems for the Visiting Writers Series supported with funding from the WV Humanities Council. Mary's DEATH FOR BEGINNERS was released in Oct 2017 with Kelsay Books: https://marycarrollhackett.com/

WV Wesleyan MFA Summer 2017 Residency “Speculation is not factual claim; it’s conjecture based on research, observation, and instinct.” -- Jason Howard, guest writer partially funded by a grant from the WV Humanities Council This lecture includes discussion of “The Lady with the Alligator Purse,” an essay by Sonja Livingston.

WV Wesleyan MFA Summer 2017 Residency “Fiction runs naturally against stereotype, poetry should too, to work against the righteousness in yourself." -- Poet Rodney Jones This lecture discusses work by Anne Carson, Michael Ondaatje, Gwendolyn Brooks, Larry Levis, James Wright, Karen Solie, and John Berryman. You'll find the readings here: http://www2.wvwc.edu/mfa/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Jones.pdf

WV Wesleyan MFA Summer 2017 Residency “Plot can be more unsettling than argument which can be answered.” In her summer lecture "What Is Light Without Dark?: Using Thematic Contrast to Build Narrative Tension and Character," Guest Fiction Faculty Mesha Maren quotes and discusses Eudora Welty's "Must the Novelist Crusade?" Other texts discussed in this lecture: Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian; Luis Alberto Urrea, The Devil’s Highway; Breece Pancake, “First Day of Winter”; Bonnie Jo Campbell, “The Trespasser”; Phil Klay, “Bodies”; Toni Morrison, Beloved; Amy Hempel, “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried”

WV Wesleyan MFA Summer 2017 Residency “Avoid being hostages of literariness.” -- Mexican novelist Yuri Herrera (This lecture discusses the painting “Las Meninas” by Diego Velázquez.)

WV Wesleyan MFA Winter 2017 Residency Karen Salyer McElmurray reading nonfiction in the Visiting Writers Series supported with funding from the WV Humanities Council Text of this award-winning essay available online at: http://www.newsoutherner.com/2016/12/13/hand-me-down/

WV Wesleyan MFA Winter 2017 Residency Marie Manilla reading nonfiction in the Visiting Writers Series supported with funding from the WV Humanities Council Text of the essay available online at: http://www.thecossackreview.com/supplement5/marie_manilla.html

WV Wesleyan MFA Winter 2017 Residency Nickole Brown reading from FANNY SAYS in the Visiting Writers Series supported with funding from the WV Humanities Council

WV Wesleyan MFA Winter 2017 Residency “Get in the creek.” -- Katie Fallon, author of the newly released "Vulture: The Private Life of an Unloved Bird" (University Press of New England)

WV Wesleyan MFA Winter 2017 Residency “All form comes down to two gestures: list (thing, thing, thing…), sheer muchness and variation; and refrain (message that recurs). Modular form suggests both at once.” -- Jaimy Gordon

WV Wesleyan MFA Winter 2017 Residency “You cannot go cheap with your work.” -- Diane Gilliam

A reading from the new anthology "Feminine Rising", edited by Lara Lillibridge and Andrea Fekete, and featuring contributors Rachel Hicks, Cheryl Denise Miller, Tuesday Taylor and Jessica Spruill Waggoner.

Recording of Belle Boggs reading from her novel, "The Gulf" during the summer residency of the West Virginia Wesleyan College Low-Residency MFA Program. Introduced by Julia Kastner.

WV Wesleyan MFA Winter 2019 Residency Guest poetry faculty member Diane Gilliam reads six new poems from her new project for the Visiting Writers Series.

WV Wesleyan MFA Winter 2019 Residency Guest nonfiction faculty member Catherine Venable Moore reads her essay "O Beulah Land" for the Visiting Writers Series. Read Catherine's full essay online in Oxford American: https://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/351-o-beulah-land

WV Wesleyan MFA Winter 2019 Residency "Memoirists wish to tell their mind, not their story." --M.F. Guest nonfiction faculty Matthew Ferrence discusses how to structure emotional shift in the essay (with some help from big-hair 80s rock!). This lecture discusses these essays: Brian Doyle, “Joyas Voladoras”; Jericho Parms, “Still Life With Chair”; Beth Peterson, “Glaciology”; Ryan Van Meter, “To Bear, To Carry…”; Jo Ann Beard, “The Fourth State of Matter"; Harrison Candelaria Fletcher, “The Beautiful City of Tirzah” You can learn about and order Matt's new memoir _Appalachia North_ here: https://wvupressonline.com/node/778